The Town Clerkship, however, was the means of giving me a lesson in electoral methods.

As we grew to love South Australia, we felt that we were in an expanding society, still feeling the bond to the motherland, but eager to develop a perfect society in the land of our adoption.

Even before the discovery of copper South Australia had turned the corner.

I look back to a happy childhood.

Drinking habits were very prevalent among men, and were not in any way disgraceful, unless excessive.

Nothing is insignificant in the history of a young community, and - above all - nothing seems impossible.

There is nothing so costly to the state as a ruined life

A glass of whisky in Scotland in the thirties cost less than a cup of tea.

South Australia was the first community to give the secret ballot for political elections.

I had only two offers of marriage in my life, and I refused both.

Probably my mother's life was prolonged beyond that of a long-lived family by her coming to Australia in middle life; and if I ever had any tendency to consumption, the climate must have helped me.

The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself.

Some is, I think, the personal in any act of writing. You find yourself caught up: you start a sentence, and it becomes revelatory, not just of the character, but of you as well.

What's now urgently needed [to stop environmental disaster] is the international political commitment to take action to avoid dangerous climate change.

I think that becoming a parent kind of made me try to be more responsible. And it made me much more stressful.

In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live.

I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam.

Honesty is as much saying everything as it is saying what is true.

I don't care what people say about me.

I am in the position of judging people by the best they've ever done rather than the worst.